


Aftershocks

by writerllofllworlds



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Feels, Heavy Angst, Hurt Merlin, M/M, Pain, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, arthur is already dead, dying inside Merlin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 07:10:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15067874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerllofllworlds/pseuds/writerllofllworlds
Summary: "It should have been me."





	Aftershocks

**Author's Note:**

> This was just rumbling around him my head the other day, so here you go.  
> As always, I do not own BBC Merlin, yet I love him dearly. Leave a comment and tell me what you thought! You guys always seem to make me smile while I'm making you sob!   
> Grab your tissues. I apologize in advance.

“It will be okay, Merlin.”

 

It was Leon again. Merlin didn’t know why he bothered anymore. Merlin hardly spoke a word to anyone, let alone him, and yet here he was, third time that week, a fake grin plastered across his face and a spring in his step that was far too forced. Gwen put him up to it, surely. She was the only one who could command anyone anymore.

No one came close enough to Merlin for him to talk to anyway, he didn’t know why he bothered caring.

“You’ll be alright, you’ll see.”

The knight received no response. Instead, he joined Merlin on the wall, legs hanging over oblivion, the wind tempting to push both of them over a hundred foot drop to the cobblestone below. It was comforting in a way, to be so close to death and yet not be able to reach it.

“Thinking of jumping?” Leon asked softly.

“Perhaps,” Merlin replied, monotone the same it had been for weeks now.

 

“Life goes on, Merlin.” The knight continued sadly, voice suddenly hoarse. “Your magic is out, Gwaine is gone, Ar-,” Merlin glared. “The king is dead, and _life goes on_.”

“I wish it wouldn’t.” The warlock snapped. “I wish everything would just stop and let me breathe. Does the world not understand how much I have lost? How much I have sacrificed for the good of _others_? Life keeps going, well good for life. At least one of us is.”

“And yet here you are,” Leon said.

Merlin lifted his face, eyes dead. “Your eye for the obvious has never dulled over all these years, has it, Sir Leon?”

The knight grimaced.

“When will it be enough?” Merlin hissed to the horizon. “When will I have done enough? When does the pain stop?”

“I don’t think it ever will, Merlin.” Leon followed his friend’s gaze. “You loved him more than, well, anyone. That’s why it hurts so much; it was real. It was real and he was real and he loved you back. You’re hurting because you lost the one person who made you feel complete. You are half of a heart now, and it will never be whole again.”

 

Merlin scoffed. “I don’t want a heart anymore, Leon. I want it gone. I want it torn out of my chest and flayed. I want it beaten to a bloody pulp and fed to the hounds. I want it stabbed over and over and over and over until it understands that I have FELT ENOUGH!”

Leon, thoroughly unfazed by his friend’s outburst, looked at him sadly. “Merlin, the pain you’re feeling, it means you’re still alive. It means you’re human.”

The warlock turned quickly to glare at him, tears unshed in his bright blue eyes. “Then I don’t want to be human! I want out! I’m done! I have felt this- this _pain_ for years and I want out! I want it to stop. I want it to end.”

And he turned back to the rising sun.

 

Leon sighed heavily, wiping at his eyes. “You’re not alone, Merlin. We all miss him.”

“No.” Merlin shook his head. “Not like me. Not like I do. Everyone would be in constant agony if they felt what I felt. There would be screaming in the streets, people would be trying to smash their own brains in, children would be screeching. _Life_ wouldn’t have gone on at all if everyone _felt_ what I _felt_.”

The loyal knight simply watched his friend. “You are so different now from when you first came to Camelot. Older. So much older. Where did that bumbling fool go off to?”

Merlin stood, looking down at Leon as he turned away. “He died when his king did and burned away to the gates of Avalon. He’s gone.”

Leon nodded, the mere sentence causing tears to gather in the corners of his eyes. He had lost so much recently. Did Merlin have to go too? “And what of you? Who are you, then, if he has gone?”

Merlin paused a moment but was no longer looking down at the knight but onwards, towards the doors. “A shell, Leon.” And there was vulnerability in his name. A crack in the icy exterior everyone had been working for weeks to shatter. “A shell who wants nothing more than to join his Lord.”

 

The knight swiped a hand over his eyes and asked, voice suddenly hoarse, “Will you jump?”

The warlock swallowed, dark cloak billowing up in the morning breeze. “Perhaps tomorrow.” And walked away, the shadows seeming to gather around him like rain, and as he disappeared into the castle he had so long protected, Leon’s heart broke just a little bit more.

 

For 13 weeks to the day, Arthur Pendragon had been dead. Many a time Leon thought that Merlin had burned with his king and the man that floated through their halls was nothing at all. Gaius always spoke of how shocked he was that Merlin had stayed for so long. The first time, Gwen was quick to reply that _no, he can’t leave. This is his home_ , and Gaius returned just as quickly. _Camelot? No, no, not this place. Him. He was his home. And now that is gone too_.

Leon looked back at the horizon. Sometimes he wondered how Merlin felt, but then he thought about that, and realized he wanted no part of it. A love that tore a person apart was a love he wanted nothing to do with.

Gaius once told Merlin that he drifted through these halls like a plague, and perhaps he was right. Everyone he loved died in the end. Freya, Balinor, Gwaine.

_Him_.

Thinking of him _hurt_. Being in Camelot, their kingdom, their home, _hurt_. Seeing knights, Gaius, Gwen, people whom he had loved, _hurt_.

God forbid he ever say his name.

 

The first time that Merlin had jumped, he had hit a stone landing before actually hitting the cobblestone far, far below and had only received a few broken bones and a head injury. After that, he tried to slit his wrist at the point he knew would kill him quickest, but his healing magic erupted in waves, saving him even quicker than Gaius could realize anything was wrong. When the rope he was going to use to break his neck was mysteriously used to start a fire, he realized that Destiny, the old fuck, just decided Merlin didn’t get to die. He wasn’t allowed that luxury.

It was rude, he thought. It was selfish and horrible and rude.

Everyone else got to die. Why was he special?

Why did he have to be so _goddamn_ special?

When Gwen found out about the jumping, she assigned Leon to watch him, keep tabs on him, baby him, whatever you wanted to call it. He would show up whenever Merlin went missing from a feast or didn’t show up at a council meeting. Merlin appreciated it, in some far corner of his mind that wasn’t dulled to the point of feeling nothing but constant agony.

It was strange, how the death of one man can change _everything_ , yet at the same time not strange at all.

After realizing that he couldn’t go and join his king, he settled on waiting, which was torture. When he had been alive every day had gone by far too quickly and now they would drag on meaninglessly. Once they were speeding by without Merlin being able to stop and savor the moments with him, now they went on for ages, every little thing going back to the king that he missed so dearly.

 

Perhaps it was Gwen’s smile that morning that had no effect on him or the way Gaius was constantly making his favorite meals, but Merlin somehow found himself in his room – _their_ room. That room was the only place Merlin could go and feel like perhaps everything hadn’t fallen apart. That he was just out training the knights and would come waltzing through the doors at any moment to insult Merlin on his stupid scarf. The room that was full of laughter and teasing and playful flirtations that revealed far too much. A room that had once been theirs, the both of them, and they had wanted for nothing.

It still smelled like him, that dusty leather and rain-covered forest scent that Merlin _adored_. Everything was regularly dusted (by the warlock of course) to help reinforce that not everything had changed. He could have this one thing, couldn’t he?

He didn’t feel so alone in this room. The love and friendship that they had shared still filled this room like a lake. It was everywhere, in everything, to the point that if he was anyone else it would have been suffocating. But Merlin felt peace.

“ _He wouldn’t want you doing this to yourself_.” Gwen had said once. Merlin had simply shrugged her off and commented about her growing stomach. She wanted to name the child after him. The warlock nodded his consent, as if she needed it, and said that he had always loved that name.

He wouldn’t want a great many things, yet here Merlin was, alone and afraid and dying inside and _he_ could do nothing about it.

 

Merlin walked to the corner of the room, where he and the king – prince then – had shared their first kiss. It had been sloppy and quick, but the daring hero was going out to a tournament he thought he wouldn’t return from and Merlin had volunteered to give him his scarf as a favor. Apparently, that was the only push that clotpole had needed. He had pressed his lips to Merlin’s with a gentleness that the young warlock had not known then, though he knew much better now.

They were so innocent then. So much future ahead of them.

Look at them now. One, dead until later, the other wishing he could do nothing more than join his master, yet destined to wait.

Wait, wait, wait! Kilgharrah was gone too and could offer the grieving warlock no assurance now as he stroked the bedclothes. That was what he told him, wasn’t it? The Once and Future King would one day return? When was ‘one day’? when did that miracle come to pass? How long would Merlin have to _wait_?

In the end, it wouldn’t truly matter because Merlin would do it. He would wait as long as it took to see his face again, his bright blue eyes and golden hair. His smile that could light up a fucking room and a laugh that made Merlin’s heart stop completely.

Perhaps he _would_ try again tomorrow and see if he could hit the stone this time.

 

Merlin stared at the desk that had not been used in ages. Was this his destiny? Fated to wait an eternity, watch everyone he loved die over and over again, all for one man? His future? Did he have no choice? Could he not trade? Could this whole fucking nightmare be over? Could he not be there, where he deserved, and Arth-

Merlin choked, stumbling backward. “Arthur.”

 

And suddenly Merlin was falling, sliding down behind the bed, body shaking with sobs as he struggled to breathe. It was all too much, the sounds, the smells, the entire room _reeked_ of _him_. The bed that was never truly finished being made because he would sit on it or lounge while reading. The cupboard that never shut quite right because of the one time he had slammed it shut while trying to kiss Merlin senseless. The window that he would stare down towards the courtyard with whenever he was troubled or wistful. The table where they had sat, just the two of them, and talked for hours and hours.

Everything was painted with the colors of Arthur, and it would never wash away.

Arthur _Arthur Arthur_ **_Arthur Arthur_**.

Shaking. The world was shaking and his face was drowning from the tears sliding down his cheeks in waves. Blurry and shaking and _wrong_ because Arthur was _gone_ and it was all his fault. Nothing was okay anymore, it wouldn’t be alright, and Merlin wanted nothing more than to die.

Gaius was suddenly there, but Merlin couldn’t hear him. Could barely see him through the tears in his eyes. All he could hear was his own voice and the mantra his tongue composed.

“It should have been me. It should have been _me_.”

 

 

"Oh, _God_ , it should have been me."


End file.
